What are the Benefits and ROI on Search Engine Optimization?

As I was reviewing old articles I had written on search engine optimization; I discovered that it was now over a decade that I’ve been providing direction. Search engine optimization rose to its peak a few years ago, a multi-billion industry that skyrocketed but then fell from grace. While SEO consultants were everywhere, many were leading their clients down a dubious path where they were gaming the search engine rather than utilizing it effectively.

I even wrote the standard, cliché article, that SEO was dead to the horror of those in my industry. It wasn’t that I thought search engines were dead, they were continuing to increase in relevance and impact to corporate digital marketing strategies. It’s that the industry was dead, having lost their way. They stopped focusing on marketing and, instead, focused on algorithms and trying to cheat their way to the top.

Every day, I receive requests requesting, begging, or even wanting to pay for backlinks. It’s maddening since it shows a complete lack of respect for the community I’ve worked to build value and trust with over the last decade. I’m not going to put that at risk for anyone’s ranking.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t still concern myself with keeping my site optimized for search engines or those of my clients. Search engine optimization continues to be a foundation of every one of our efforts with our clients, large and small.

Benefits of SEO

The online experience begins with search – 93% of today’s consumers use a search engine to look for products and services Tweet This!

SEO is very cost effective – 82% of marketers see SEO as becoming more effective, with 42% seeing a significant rise Tweet This!

SEO produces high traffic and high conversion rates – 3 billion people search the Internet each and every day Tweet This! with keywords driving highly relevant, targeted intentful searches.

SEO is the norm in the competition today – Ranking isn’t just an indicator of a comapny’s SEO capabilities, it’s an indicator of your comapny’s overall authority within your industry.

SEO caters to the mobile market – 50% of local mobile searches lead to a visit to a store Tweet This!

SEO is ever-changing and so are its opportunities – Search engines continue to improve their algorithms and personalize and tailor results to maximize customer experience. SEO isn’t something you do, it requires continuous attention to monitor both search engine changes and efforts from your compeitors.

ROI of SEO

The first thing to remember about the return on investment for SEO is that it’s going to fluctuate over time. If you continue to optimize and produce remarkable content, the return on investment will increase over time. As an example, you produce an infographic on a highly competitive term and the investment is $10,000 in research, design, and promotion. In the first month, you execute the campaign and get a few leads and maybe even one conversion with a value of $1,000 profit. Your ROI is upside-down.

But the campaign has yet to achieve its maximum return. In month two and three, the infographic is pitched to several high-authority websites and is published on a couple. The resulting credit increases your site’s authority for the topic and you begin to rank high on dozens of keywords over the next few months. The infographic and related pages or articles begin to get hundreds of leads with dozens of closes each month. Now you’re seeing a positive ROI. That ROI may continue to increase over the next couple years.

We have one infographic for a client that continues to get attention seven years after first publishing it! Not to mention we’ve utilized the content for sales collateral and other initiatives. The ROI on that infographic is now in the thousands!

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